The main stroke warning signs with respect to
texting would be unintelligible language output, or problems reading or
comprehending texts," said Klein. "Many smartphones have an
‘autocorrect' function which can introduce erroneous word substitutions,
giving the impression of a language disorder."

Autocorrect, said Savitz, a professor of neurology, can confuse matters - even for doctors. "I
have often joked with my colleagues when using the dictation of the
smartphone, that it gives me an aphasia," he said. "Potential for lots
of false positives!"

Monday, December 24, 2012

Note: I support the concept of intellectual property rights and eventually these issues of how to best apply that basic idea to our new technology platforms will be resolved. But there could be some interesting controversies in the meantime.

Friday, December 21, 2012

CHAMP, which renders electronic targets useless, is a non-kinetic
alternative to traditional explosive weapons that use the energy of
motion to defeat a target.

During the test, the CHAMP missile navigated a pre-programmed flight
plan and emitted bursts of high-powered energy, effectively knocking
out the target's data and electronic subsystems. CHAMP allows for
selective high-frequency radio wave strikes against numerous targets
during a single mission.

Numerous commercial enterprises exist that will eventually provide
competitively priced access to spaceflight experiences for paying
customers. With spaceports construction under way, bookings are already
taking place. Physicians can in future expect patients to ask questions
and request clearance processes (such as fitness to fly certificates)
for space travel as they do for commercial airplane flights today.

Here, we provide some background to the field of space medicine for
non-experts and point to resources for clinicians when a patient
presents with requests related to space travel.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

"Ear pulling is a traditional Inuit game in which competitors sit with their legs in front of their bodies and intertwined, facing each other."

Competitor's left and right ears, respectively, are linked to their rival's via a two-foot-long loop of waxed string. From there, the game is more or less self explanatory: the two competitors pull. The idea is to endure as much pain as possible. The winner is the first man or woman to dislodge the string from the ear of their competition, withstanding the pain a little longer.

Of course, once the basic idea is out, motivated hobbyists will continue to trade the data files. As the article notes:

In response to Makerbot’s crackdown, Defense Distributed founder Cody
Wilson wrote to me in an email, saying that the group plans to create
its own site for hosting “fugitive” 3D printable gun files “in the next
few hours.”

In the photo above, we get a first glimpse of Hugo’s
Asa Butterfield (right) as Ender, standing in line with other new
recruits (a.k.a. “Launchies”) early on at his time in the Battle School.
He’s facing off with the imposing Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) over
whether his emails to home are being blocked. It’s telling that the two
characters are clashing over communication, since they’ve got major
communication issues with each other. In the novel, Ender could never be
sure whether Graff was manipulating him, or whether he simply saw great
potential in him and wanted to foster it.

Because the lower receiver was made of plastic, it only lasted 6 rounds. But the article also notes:

In an industrial setting, though, 3D printing processes such as selective laser melting/sintering (SLM, SLS) are being used to create incredibly rugged parts out of metal. NASA, for example, is producing rocket parts with 3D printing.
It is really only a matter of time until everyone has the hardware at
home to print a complete firearm — or, well, any weapon really.

Monday, December 03, 2012

[Flash memory] wears out after being programmed and erased about 10,000 times.
That’s fine for a USB dongle that you’ll probably lose in a year, but
not ideal for the solid-state drives of server farms. And the same
problem keeps manufacturers from using flash to replace other types of
computer memories. This month, at the 2012 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting,
engineers from Macronix plan to report the invention of a self-healing
NAND flash memory that survives more than 100 million cycles. ..

[Card traps] involve devices that fit over the card acceptance slot and
include a razor-edged spring trap that prevents the customer’s card from
being ejected from the ATM when the transaction is completed.

"Spring traps are still being widely used," EAST wrote in its most
recently European Fraud Update. "Once the card has been inserted, these
prevent the card being returned to the customer and also stop the ATM
from retracting it. According to reports from one country ­ despite
warning messages that appear on the ATM screen or are displayed on the
ATM fascia ­ customers are still not reporting when their cards are
captured, leading to substantial losses from ATM or point-of-sale
transactions."

Click through to see some pictures of the devices. (Via Bruce Schneier.)